Methods and systems for managing data

ABSTRACT

Methods and systems and machine readable media for managing data. In one exemplary embodiment, an initial search query is received and examined to determine whether elements within the initial search query are within the same category of data, and a machine interpreted search query is derived in response to the determining. Other methods and systems and media are also described.

This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/877,584, filed on Jun. 25, 2004 now U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,012. This application also claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/643,087 filed on Jan. 7, 2005, which provisional application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety; this application claims the benefit of the provisional's filing date under 35 U.S.C. §119(e). This present application hereby claims the benefit of these earlier filing dates under 35 U.S.C. §120.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Modern data processing systems, such as general purpose computer systems, allow the users of such systems to create a variety of different types of data files. For example, a typical user of a data processing system may create text files with a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or may create an image file with an image processing program such as Adobe's PhotoShop. Numerous other types of files are capable of being created or modified, edited, and otherwise used by one or more users for a typical data processing system. The large number of the different types of files that can be created or modified can present a challenge to a typical user who is seeking to find a particular file which has been created.

Modern data processing systems often include a file management system which allows a user to place files in various directories or subdirectories (e.g. folders) and allows a user to give the file a name. Further, these file management systems often allow a user to find a file by searching for the file's name, or the date of creation, or the date of modification, or the type of file. An example of such a file management system is the Finder program which operates on Macintosh computers from Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. Another example of a file management system program is the Windows Explorer program which operates on the Windows operating system from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Both the Finder program and the Windows Explorer program include a find command which allows a user to search for files by various criteria including a file name or a date of creation or a date of modification or the type of file. However, this search capability searches through information which is the same for each file, regardless of the type of file. Thus, for example, the searchable data for a Microsoft Word file is the same as the searchable data for an Adobe PhotoShop file, and this data typically includes the file name, the type of file, the date of creation, the date of last modification, the size of the file and certain other parameters which may be maintained for the file by the file management system.

Certain presently existing application programs allow a user to maintain data about a particular file. This data about a particular file may be considered metadata because it is data about other data. This metadata for a particular file may include information about the author of a file, a summary of the document, and various other types of information. A program such as Microsoft Word may automatically create some of this data when a user creates a file and the user may add additional data or edit the data by selecting the “property sheet” from a menu selection in Microsoft Word. The property sheets in Microsoft Word allow a user to create metadata for a particular file or document. However, in existing systems, a user is not able to search for metadata across a variety of different applications using one search request from the user. Furthermore, existing systems can perform one search for data files, but this search does not also include searching through metadata for those files.

Certain existing systems can receive a multiple word search input and automatically add Boolean AND operators between the words of the search input to create a search input which is used to perform a search. These certain existing systems cannot, however, determine whether elements within the multiple word search input are within a same category of data.

SUMMARY OF THE DESCRIPTION

Methods for managing data in a data processing system and systems for managing data are described herein. These methods and systems typically receive a first input and convert it into a second input for use in performing a search.

According to one aspect of the inventions, an exemplary method includes receiving an input which represents an initial search query, determining whether elements within the initial search query are within the same category of data, and deriving a machine-interpreted search query in response to the determining. One specific implementation of this method involves grouping elements within the same category of data with a Boolean OR operator, and wherein the category of data is one of a date parameter for a file, a file type parameter, or a person parameter, such as an author or sender of a document. Alternative implementations may group some or all of the elements with other Boolean operators (e.g. AND, NOT, XOR, etc.).

According to another aspect of the inventions, an exemplary method includes receiving a user input which specifies an initial search query, interpreting the initial search query to create a machine interpreted search query, and performing a search using the machine-interpreted search query before advising the user that the search used the machine-interpreted search query which is different than the initial search query.

According to another aspect of the inventions, an exemplary method includes receiving an input which represents a search query which includes at least one word, and performing, in response to the input, a prefix matching search through metadata from a plurality of files created by at least one software application wherein the type of information in metadata for files of a first type differs from the type of information in metadata of a second type. In one specific implementation of this method, at least one of the characters dot (“.”) and dash (“-”) are matched as part of the prefix matching search. In other words, characters which are normally treated as separators between words (and hence not part of a word) are treated as part of a word, such as the beginning of a word, and are considered for matching as part of a prefix matching search.

Other aspects of the present inventions include various data processing systems which perform these methods and machine readable media which perform various methods described herein.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention is illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements.

FIG. 1 shows an exemplary embodiment of a data processing system, which may be a general purpose computer system and which may operate in any of the various methods described herein.

FIG. 2 shows a general example of one exemplary method of one aspect of the invention.

FIG. 3A shows an example of the content of the particular type of metadata for a particular type of file.

FIG. 3B shows another example of a particular type of metadata for another particular type of file.

FIG. 4 shows an example of an architecture for managing metadata according to one exemplary embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing another exemplary method of the present invention.

FIG. 6 shows an example of a storage format which utilizes a flat file format for metadata according to one exemplary embodiment of the invention.

FIGS. 7A-7E show a sequence of graphical user interfaces provided by one exemplary embodiment in order to allow searching of metadata and/or other data in a data processing system.

FIGS. 8A and 8B show two examples of formats for displaying search results according to one exemplary embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 9 shows another exemplary user interface of the present invention.

FIG. 10 shows another exemplary user interface of the present invention.

FIGS. 11A-11D show, in sequence, another exemplary user interface according to the present invention.

FIGS. 12A-12D show alternative embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIGS. 13A and 13B show further alternative embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIGS. 14A, 14B, 14C, and 14D show further alternative embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIGS. 15A, 15B, 15C and 15D show another alternative embodiment of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIGS. 16A and 16B show certain aspects of embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIG. 17 shows an aspect of certain embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIGS. 18A and 18B show further aspects of certain embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIGS. 19A, 19B, 19C, 19D, and 19E show further illustrative embodiments of user interfaces according to the present invention.

FIG. 20 is a flow chart which illustrates another exemplary method of the present invention.

FIG. 21 is a flow chart showing another exemplary method of the present invention.

FIGS. 22A, 22B, 22C, and 22D illustrate the display of a display device on which an embodiment of the method of FIG. 21 is performed.

FIG. 23 is a flowchart which illustrates an exemplary method of the present invention which uses a machine-interpreted form of a search query.

FIG. 24 is a flowchart which illustrates another exemplary method of the present invention which allows a user to turn on or to turn off machine interpretation of user inputted search queries.

FIG. 25 is a flowchart which illustrates a more specific exemplary method of the present invention.

FIG. 26 is a flowchart which illustrates another more specific exemplary method of the present inventions.

FIG. 27, FIG. 28, and FIG. 29 provide examples of how search queries are interpreted by a machine to provide a machine-interpreted search query according to at least certain embodiments of the present inventions.

FIG. 30 is a flowchart which illustrates another exemplary method of the present inventions.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The subject invention will be described with reference to numerous details set forth below, and the accompanying drawings will illustrate the invention. The following description and drawings are illustrative of the invention and are not to be construed as limiting the invention. Numerous specific details are described to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, in certain instances, well known or conventional details are not described in order to not unnecessarily obscure the present invention in detail.

The present description includes material protected by copyrights, such as illustrations of graphical user interface images. The owners of the copyrights, including the assignee of the present invention, hereby reserve their rights, including copyright, in these materials. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyrights whatsoever. Copyright Apple Computer, Inc. 2004.

FIG. 1 shows one example of a typical computer system which may be used with the present invention. Note that while FIG. 1 illustrates various components of a computer system, it is not intended to represent any particular architecture or manner of interconnecting the components as such details are not germane to the present invention. It will also be appreciated that network computers and other data processing systems which have fewer components or perhaps more components may also be used with the present invention. The computer system of FIG. 1 may, for example, be a Macintosh computer from Apple Computer, Inc.

As shown in FIG. 1, the computer system 101, which is a form of a data processing system, includes a bus 102 which is coupled to a microprocessor(s) 103 and a ROM (Read Only Memory) 107 and volatile RAM 105 and a non-volatile memory 106. The microprocessor 103 may be a G3 or G4 microprocessor from Motorola, Inc. or one or more G5 microprocessors from IBM. The bus 102 interconnects these various components together and also interconnects these components 103, 107, 105, and 106 to a display controller and display device 104 and to peripheral devices such as input/output (I/O) devices which may be mice, keyboards, modems, network interfaces, printers and other devices which are well known in the art. Typically, the input/output devices 109 are coupled to the system through input/output controllers 108. The volatile RAM (Random Access Memory) 105 is typically implemented as dynamic RAM (DRAM) which requires power continually in order to refresh or maintain the data in the memory. The mass storage 106 is typically a magnetic hard drive or a magnetic optical drive or an optical drive or a DVD RAM or other types of memory systems which maintain data (e.g. large amounts of data) even after power is removed from the system. Typically, the mass storage 106 will also be a random access memory although this is not required. While FIG. 1 shows that the mass storage 106 is a local device coupled directly to the rest of the components in the data processing system, it will be appreciated that the present invention may utilize a non-volatile memory which is remote from the system, such as a network storage device which is coupled to the data processing system through a network interface such as a modem or Ethernet interface. The bus 102 may include one or more buses connected to each other through various bridges, controllers and/or adapters as is well known in the art. In one embodiment the I/O controller 108 includes a USB (Universal Serial Bus) adapter for controlling USB peripherals and an IEEE 1394 controller for IEEE 1394 compliant peripherals.

It will be apparent from this description that aspects of the present invention may be embodied, at least in part, in software. That is, the techniques may be carried out in a computer system or other data processing system in response to its processor, such as a microprocessor, executing sequences of instructions contained in a memory, such as ROM 107, RAM 105, mass storage 106 or a remote storage device. In various embodiments, hardwired circuitry may be used in combination with software instructions to implement the present invention. Thus, the techniques are not limited to any specific combination of hardware circuitry and software nor to any particular source for the instructions executed by the data processing system. In addition, throughout this description, various functions and operations are described as being performed by or caused by software code to simplify description. However, those skilled in the art will recognize what is meant by such expressions is that the functions result from execution of the code by a processor, such as the microprocessor 103.

Capturing and Use of Metadata Across a Variety of Application Programs

FIG. 2 shows a generalized example of one embodiment of the present invention. In this example, captured metadata is made available to a searching facility, such as a component of the operating system which allows concurrent searching of all metadata for all applications having captured metadata (and optionally for all non-metadata of the data files). The method of FIG. 2 may begin in operation 201 in which metadata is captured from a variety of different application programs. This captured metadata is then made available in operation 203 to a searching facility, such as a file management system software for searching. This searching facility allows, in operation 205, the searching of metadata across all applications having captured metadata. The method also provides, in operation 207, a user interface of a search engine and the search results which are obtained by the search engine. There are numerous possible implementations of the method of FIG. 2. For example, FIG. 5 shows a specific implementation of one exemplary embodiment of the method of FIG. 2. Alternative implementations may also be used. For example, in an alternative implementation, the metadata may be provided by each application program to a central source which stores the metadata for use by searching facilities and which is managed by an operating system component, which may be, for example, the metadata processing software. The user interface provided in operation 207 may take a variety of different formats, including some of the examples described below as well as user interfaces which are conventional, prior art user interfaces. The metadata may be stored in a database which may be any of a variety of formats including a B tree format or, as described below, in a flat file format according to one embodiment of the invention.

The method of FIG. 2 may be implemented for programs which do not store or provide metadata. In this circumstance, a portion of the operating system provides for the capture of the metadata from the variety of different programs even though the programs have not been designed to provide or capture metadata. For those programs which do allow a user to create metadata for a particular document, certain embodiments of the present invention may allow the exporting back of captured metadata back into data files for applications which maintain metadata about their data files.

The method of FIG. 2 allows information about a variety of different files created by a variety of different application programs to be accessible by a system wide searching facility, which is similar to the way in which prior art versions of the Finder or Windows Explorer can search for file names, dates of creation, etc. across a variety of different application programs. Thus, the metadata for a variety of different files created by a variety of different application programs can be accessed through an extension of an operating system, and an example of such an extension is shown in FIG. 4 as a metadata processing software which interacts with other components of the system and will be described further below.

FIGS. 3A and 3B show two different metadata formats for two different types of data files. Note that there may be no overlap in any of the fields; in other words, no field in one type of metadata is the same as any field in the other type of metadata. Metadata format 301 may be used for an image file such as a JPEG image file. This metadata may include information such as the image's width, the image's height, the image's color space, the number of bits per pixel, the ISO setting, the flash setting, the F/stop of the camera, the brand name of the camera which took the image, user-added keywords and other fields, such as a field which uniquely identifies the particular file, which identification is persistent through modifications of the file. Metadata format 331 shown in FIG. 3B may be used for a music file such as an MP3 music file. The data in this metadata format may include an identification of the artist, the genre of the music, the name of the album, song names in the album or the song name of the particular file, song play times or the song play time of a particular song and other fields, such as a persistent file ID number which identifies the particular MP3 file from which the metadata was captured. Other types of fields may also be used. The following chart shows examples of the various fields which may be used in metadata for various types of files.

Copied Item Parent in Multi- User with App name hierarchy Attribute name Description/Notes CFType value Localized settable Gettable copy viewable Item n/a Authors Who created or CFString Yes No Yes Yes Yes Address contributed to the Book contents of this item Comment A free form text CFString No No Yes Yes Yes comment ContentType This is the type that is CFString No ? No Yes Yes determined by UTI ContentTypes This is the inheritance of CFString Yes ? No Yes Yes the UTI system CreatedDate When was this item CFDate No No No Yes Yes created DisplayName The name of the item as CFString No Yes Yes Yes Yes Finder (or the user would like to Launch read it. Very well may Services) be the file name, but it may also be the subject of an e-mail message or the full name of a person, for example. Keywords This is a list words set CFString Yes System- Yes Yes Ask by the user to identify provided arbitrary sets of keywords organization. The scope (if any) is determined by the user and can be flexibly used for any kind of organization. For example, Family, Hawaii, Project X, etc. Contact A list of contacts that CFString Yes No Yes Yes Ask Address Keywords are associated with this Book document, beyond what is captured as Author. This may be a person who's in the picture or a document about a person or contact (performance review, contract) ModifiedDate When this item was last CFDate No No No Yes modified Rating A relative rating (0 to 5 CFNumber No n/a Yes Yes value) on how important a particular item is to you, whether it's a person, file or message RelatedTos A list of other items that CFString Yes No Yes Yes are arbitrarily grouped together. TextContent An indexed version of CFString No No No Yes any content text UsedDates Which days was the CFDate Yes No No Yes document opened/viewed/played Content/ Item Copyright Specifies the owner of CFString No No Yes Yes Data this content, i.e. Copyright Apple Computer, Inc. CreatorApp Keeps track of the CFString No ? No Yes application that was used to create this document (if it's known). Languages The languages that this CFString Yes Yes Yes Yes document is composed in (for either text or audio-based media) ParentalControl A field that is used to CFString No ? Yes Yes determine whether this is kid-friendly content or not Publishers The name or a person or CFString Yes No Yes Yes Address organization that Book published this content. PublishedDate The original date that CFDate No No Yes Yes this content was published (if it was), independent of created date. Reviewers A list of contacts who CFString Yes No Yes Yes Address have reviewed the Book contents of this file. This would have to be set explicitly by an application. ReviewStatus Free form text that used CFString No ? Yes Yes to specify where the document is in any arbitrary review process TimeEdited Total time spent editing CFDate No No No Yes document WhereTos Where did this go to, eg. CFString Yes System- ? Yes CD, printed, backedup provided words only (if any) WhereFroms Where did this come CFString Yes System- ? Yes from, e.g. camera, email, provided web download, CD words only (if any) Image Data BitsPerSample What is the bit depth of CFNumber No Yes the image (8-bit, 16-bit, etc.) ColorSpace What color space model CFString No Yes ColorSync is this document Utility? following ImageHeight The height of the image CFNumber No Yes in pixels ImageWidth The width of the image CFNumber No Yes in pixels ProfileName The name of the color CFString No Yes ColorSync profile used with for Utility? image ResolutionWidth Resolution width of this CFNumber No Yes image (i.e. dpi from a scanner) ResolutionHeight Resolution height of this CFNumber No Yes image (i.e. dpi from a scanner) LayerNames For image formats that CFString Yes Yes contain “named” layers (e.g. Photoshop files) Aperture The f-stop rating of the CFNumber No Yes camera when the image was taken CameraMake The make of the camera CFString No Yes Yes that was used to acquire this image (e.g. Nikon) CameraModel The model of the camera CFString No Yes Yes used to acquire this image (Coolpix 5700) DateTimeOriginal Date/time the picture CFDate No Yes was taken ExposureMode Mode that was used for CFString No Yes the exposure ExposureTime Time that the lens was CFDate No Yes exposed while taking the picture Flash This attribute is CFNumber No Yes overloaded with information about red- eye reduction. This is not a binary value GPS Raw value received CFString No Yes from GPS device associated with photo acquisition. It hasn't necessarily been translated to a user- understandable location. ISOSpeed The ISO speed the CFNumber No Yes camera was set to when the image was acquired Orientation The orientation of the CFString No Yes camera when the image was acquired WhiteBalance The white balance CFNumber No Yes setting of the camera when the picture was taken EXIFversion The version of EXIF CFString No Yes that was used to generate the metadata for the image Time- Data Acquisition- The name or type of CFString Yes Yes based Sources device that used to acquire the media Codecs The codecs used to CFString Yes Yes encode/decode the media DeliveryType FastStart or RTSP CFString No Yes Duration The length of time that CFNumber No Yes the media lasts Streamable Whether the content is CFBoolean No Yes prepared for purposes of streaming TotalBitRate The total bit rate (audio CFNumber No Yes & video combined) of the media. AudioBitRate The audio bit rate of the CFNumber No Yes media AspectRatio The aspect ratio of the CFString No Yes video of the media ColorSpace The color space model CFString No Yes used for the video aspect of the media FrameHeight The frame height in CFNumber No Yes pixels of the video in the media FrameWidth The frame width in CFNumber No Yes pixels of the video in the media ProfileName The name of the color CFString No Yes profile used on the video portion of the media VideoBitRate The bit rate of the video CFNumber No Yes aspect of the media Text Data Subject The subject of the text. CFString No Yes This could be metadata that's supplied with the text or something automatically generated with technologies like VTWIN PageCount The number of printable CFNumber No Yes pages of the document LineCount The number of lines in CFNumber No Yes the document WordCount The number of words in CFNumber No Yes the document URL The URL that will get CFString No Yes you to this document (or at least did at one time). Relevant for saved HTML documents, bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc. PageTitle The title of a web page. CFString No Yes Relevant to HTML or bookmark documents Google Structure of where this CFString No Yes Hierarchy page can be found in the Google hierarchy. Relevant to HTML or bookmark documents Compound Data <Abstract> There are no specific n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a document attributes assigned to this item. This is to catch all app-specific file formats that fall within Data, but don't fit into any of the other types. Typically these documents have multiple types of media embedded within them. (e.g. P PDF Compound NumberOfPages The number of printable CFNumber No Yes document pages in the document PageSize The size of the page CFNumber No No Yes stored as points PDFTitle PDF-specific title CFString No ? Yes metadata for the document PDFAuthor PDF-specific author CFString No ? Yes Address metadata for the Book document PDFSubject PDF-specific subject CFString No ? Yes metadata for the document PDFKeywords PDF-specific keywords CFString Yes ? Yes metadata for the document PDFCreated PDF-specific created CFDate No ? Yes metadata for the document PDFModified PDF-specific modified CFDate No ? Yes metadata for the document PDFVersion PDF-specific version CFString No ? Yes metadata for the document SecurityMethod Method by which this CFString No Yes document is kept secure Presentation Compound SlideTitles A collection of the titles CFString Yes Yes (Keynote) document on slides SlideCount The number of slides CFString No Yes SpeakerNotes- The content of all the CFString ? Yes Content speaker notes from all of the slides together Application Item Categories The kind of application CFString Yes Yes this is: productivity, games, utility, graphics, etc. A set list that Message Item Recipients Maps to To and Cc: CFString Yes Yes Address addresses in a mail Book message. Priority The priority of the CFString No Yes message as set by the sender Attachment- The list of filenames that CFString Yes Yes Names represent attachments in a particular message (should be actionable within the Finder) Authors maps to From address in CFString Yes No Yes Yes Yes Address mail message Book Comment Not applicable to Mail CFString No No Yes Yes Yes right now (should we consider?) ContentType CFString No No Yes Yes ContentTypes CFString Yes No Yes Yes CreatedDate When was this message CFDate No No No Yes Yes was sent or received DisplayName Subject of the message CFString No Yes Yes Yes Yes Keywords There will be a way to CFString Yes System- Yes Yes Ask set keywords within provided Mail keywords (if any) Contact Could be where CFString Yes No Yes Yes Ask Address Keywords recipients are held Book ModifiedDate Not applicable CFDate No No No Yes Rating A relative rating (0 to 5 CFNumber No n/a Yes Yes stars) on how important a particular message is to you (separate from a message's Priority) RelatedTos Potentially threaded CFString Yes No Yes Yes messages could be put into this category TextContent An indexed version of CFString No No No Yes the mail message UsedDates The day/time in which CFDate Yes No No Yes the mail message was viewed/read Contact Item Company The company that this CFString No Yes Address contact is an employee Book of E-mails A list of e-mail CFString Yes Yes Mail addresses that this contact has IMs A list of instant message CFString Yes Yes iChat handles this contact has Phones A list of phone numbers CFString Yes that relate to this contact Addresses A list of physical CFString Yes addresses that relate to this person Authors the name of the owner of CFString Yes No Yes Yes Yes Address the Address Book Book (current user name) Comment CFString No No Yes Yes Yes ContentType CFString No No Yes Yes ContentTypes CFString Yes No Yes Yes CreatedDate date the user entered this CFDate No No No Yes Yes into his AddressBook (either through import or direct entry) DisplayName Composite name of CFString No Yes Yes Yes Yes contact (First Name, Last Name) Keywords There will be a way to CFString Yes System- Yes Yes Ask set keywords within provided Address Book keywords (if any) Contact CFString Yes No Yes Yes Ask Address Keywords Book ModifiedDate Last time this contact CFDate No No No Yes entry was modified Rating A relative rating (0 to 5 CFNumber No n/a Yes Yes stars) on how important a particular contact is to you (separate from a message's Priority) RelatedTos (potentially could be CFString Yes No Yes Yes used to associate people from the same company or family) TextContent An indexed version of CFString No No No Yes the Notes section UsedDates The day/time in which CFDate Yes No No Yes the contact entry was viewed in Address Book Meeting Item Body text, rich text or CFString No Yes (TBD) document that represents the full content of the event Description text describing the event CFString No Yes EventTimes time/date the event starts CFDate Yes Yes Duration The length of time that CFNumber No Yes the meeting lasts Invitees The list of people who CFString Yes Yes Address are invited to the Book meeting Location The name of the location CFString No Yes where the meeting is taking place

One particular field which may be useful in the various metadata formats would be a field which includes an identifier of a plug in or other software element which may be used to capture metadata from a data file and/or export metadata back to the creator application.

Various different software architectures may be used to implement the functions and operations described herein. The following discussion provides one example of such an architecture, but it will be understood that alternative architectures may also be employed to achieve the same or similar results. The software architecture shown in FIG. 4 is an example which is based upon the Macintosh operating system. The architecture 400 includes a metadata processing software 401 and an operating system (OS) kernel 403 which is operatively coupled to the metadata processing software 401 for a notification mechanism which is described below. The metadata processing software 401 is also coupled to other software programs such as a file system graphical user interface software 405 (which may be the Finder), an email software 407, and other applications 409. These applications are coupled to the metadata processing software 401 through client application program interface 411 which provide a method for transferring data and commands between the metadata processing software 401 and the software 405, 407, and 409. These commands and data may include search parameters specified by a user as well as commands to perform searches from the user, which parameters and commands are passed to the metadata processing software 401 through the interface 411. The metadata processing software 401 is also coupled to a collection of importers 413 which extract data from various applications. In particular, in one exemplary embodiment, a text importer is used to extract text and other information from word processing or text processing files created by word processing programs such as Microsoft Word, etc. This extracted information is the metadata for a particular file. Other types of importers extract metadata from other types of files, such as image files or music files. In this particular embodiment, a particular importer is selected based upon the type of file which has been created and modified by an application program. For example, if the data file was created by PhotoShop, then an image importer for PhotoShop may be used to input the metadata from a PhotoShop data file into the metadata database 415 through the metadata processing software 401. On the other hand, if the data file is a word processing document, then an importer designed to extract metadata from a word processing document is called upon to extract the metadata from the word processing data file and place it into the metadata database 415 through the metadata processing software 401. Typically, a plurality of different importers may be required in order to handle the plurality of different application programs which are used in a typical computer system. The importers 413 may optionally include a plurality of exporters which are capable of exporting the extracted metadata for particular types of data files back to property sheets or other data components maintained by certain application programs. For example, certain application programs may maintain some metadata for each data file created by the program, but this metadata is only a subset of the metadata extracted by an importer from this type of data file. In this instance, the exporter may export back additional metadata or may simply insert metadata into blank fields of metadata maintained by the application program.

The software architecture 400 also includes a file system directory 417 for the metadata. This file system directory keeps track of the relationship between the data files and their metadata and keeps track of the location of the metadata object (e.g. a metadata file which corresponds to the data file from which it was extracted) created by each importer. In one exemplary embodiment, the metadata database is maintained as a flat file format as described below, and the file system directory 417 maintains this flat file format. One advantage of a flat file format is that the data is laid out on a storage device as a string of data without references between fields from one metadata file (corresponding to a particular data file) to another metadata file (corresponding to another data file). This arrangement of data will often result in faster retrieval of information from the metadata database 415.

The software architecture 400 of FIG. 4 also includes find by content software 419 which is operatively coupled to a database 421 which includes an index of files. The index of files represents at least a subset of the data files in a storage device and may include all of the data files in a particular storage device (or several storage devices), such as the main hard drive of a computer system. The index of files may be a conventional indexed representation of the content of each document. The find by content software 419 searches for words in that content by searching through the database 421 to see if a particular word exists in any of the data files which have been indexed. The find by content software functionality is available through the metadata processing software 401 which provides the advantage to the user that the user can search concurrently both the index of files in the database 421 (for the content within a file) as well as the metadata for the various data files being searched. The software architecture shown in FIG. 4 may be used to perform the method shown in FIG. 5 or alternative architectures may be used to perform the method of FIG. 5.

The method of FIG. 5 may begin in operation 501 in which a notification of a change for a file is received. This notification may come from the OS kernel 403 which notifies the metadata processing software 401 that a file has been changed. This notification may come from sniffer software elements which detect new or modified files and deletion of files. This change may be the creation of a new file or the modification of an existing file or the deletion of an existing file. The deletion of an existing file causes a special case of the processing method of FIG. 5 and is not shown in FIG. 5. In the case of a deletion, the metadata processing software 401, through the use of the file system directory 417, deletes the metadata file in the metadata database 415 which corresponds to the deleted file. The other types of operations, such as the creation of a new file or the modification of an existing file, causes the processing to proceed from operation 501 to operation 503 in which the type of file which is the subject of the notification is determined. The file may be an Acrobat PDF file or an RTF word processing file or a JPEG image file, etc. In any case, the type of the file is determined in operation 503. This may be performed by receiving from the OS kernel 403 the type of file along with the notification or the metadata processing software 401 may request an identification of the type of file from the file system graphical user interface software 405 or similar software which maintains information about the data file, such as the creator application or parent application of the data file. It will be understood that in one exemplary embodiment, the file system graphical user interface software 405 is the Finder program which operates on the Macintosh operating system. In alternative embodiments, the file system graphical user interface system may be Windows Explorer which operates on Microsoft's Windows operating system. After the type of file has been determined in operation 503, the appropriate capture software (e.g. one of the importers 413) is activated for the determined file type 505. The importers may be a plug-in for the particular application which created the type of file about which notification is received in operation 501. Once activated, the importer or capture software imports the appropriate metadata (for the particular file type) into the metadata database, such as metadata database 415 as shown in operation 507. Then in operation 509, the metadata is stored in the database, In one exemplary embodiment, it may be stored in a flat file format. Then in operation 511, the metadata processing software 401 receives search parameter inputs and performs a search of the metadata database (and optionally also causes a search of non-metadata sources such as the index of files 421) and causes the results of the search to be displayed in a user interface. This may be performed by exchanging information between one of the applications, such as the software 405 or the software 407 or the other applications 409 and the metadata processing software 401 through the interface 411. For example, the file system software 405 may present a graphical user interface, allowing a user to input search parameters and allowing the user to cause a search to be performed. This information is conveyed through the interface 411 to the metadata processing software 401 which causes a search through the metadata database 415 and also may cause a search through the database 421 of the indexed files in order to search for content within each data file which has been indexed. The results from these searches are provided by the metadata processing software 401 to the requesting application which, in the example given here, was the software 405, but it will be appreciated that other components of software, such as the email software 407, may be used to receive the search inputs and to provide a display of the search results. Various examples of the user interface for inputting search requests and for displaying search results are described herein and shown in the accompanying drawings.

It will be appreciated that the notification, if done through the OS kernel, is a global, system wide notification process such that changes to any file will cause a notification to be sent to the metadata processing software. It will also be appreciated that in alternative embodiments, each application program may itself generate the necessary metadata and provide the metadata directly to a metadata database without the requirement of a notification from an operating system kernel or from the intervention of importers, such as the importers 413. Alternatively, rather than using OS kernel notifications, an embodiment may use software calls from each application to a metadata processing software which receives these calls and then imports the metadata from each file in response to the call.

As noted above, the metadata database 415 may be stored in a flat file format in order to improve the speed of retrieval of information in most circumstances. The flat file format may be considered to be a non-B tree, non-hash tree format in which data is not attempted to be organized but is rather stored as a stream of data. Each metadata object or metadata file will itself contain fields, such as the fields shown in the examples of FIGS. 3A and 3B. However, there will typically be no relationship or reference or pointer from one field in one metadata file to the corresponding field (or another field) in the next metadata file or in another metadata file of the same file type. FIG. 6 shows an example of the layout in a flat file format of metadata. The format 601 includes a plurality of metadata files for a corresponding plurality of data files. As shown in FIG. 6, metadata file 603 is metadata from file 1 of application A and may be referred to as metadata file A1. Similarly, metadata file 605 is metadata from file 1 of application B and may be referred to as metadata file B1. Each of these metadata files typically would include fields which are not linked to other fields and which do not contain references or pointers to other fields in other metadata files. It can be seen from FIG. 6 that the metadata database of FIG. 6 includes metadata files from a plurality of different applications (applications A, B, and C) and different files created by each of those applications. Metadata files 607, 609, 611, and 617 are additional metadata files created by applications A, B, and C as shown in FIG. 6.

A flexible query language may be used to search the metadata database in the same way that such query languages are used to search other databases. The data within each metadata file may be packed or even compressed if desirable. As noted above, each metadata file, in certain embodiments, will include a persistent identifier which uniquely identifies its corresponding data file. This identifier remains the same even if the name of the file is changed or the file is modified. This allows for the persistent association between the particular data file and its metadata.

User Interface Aspects

Various different examples of user interfaces for inputting search parameters and for displaying search results are provided herein. It will be understood that some features from certain embodiments may be mixed with other embodiments such that hybrid embodiments may result from these combinations. It will be appreciated that certain features may be removed from each of these embodiments and still provide adequate functionality in many instances.

FIG. 7A shows a graphical user interface which is a window which may be displayed on a display device which is coupled to a data processing system such as a computer system. The window 701 includes a side bar having two regions 703A, which is a user-configurable region, and 703B, which is a region which is specified by the data processing system. Further details in connection with these side bar regions may be found in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/873,661 filed on Jun. 21, 2004, and entitled “Methods and Apparatuses for Operating a Data Processing System,” by inventors Donald Lindsay and Bas Ording. The window 701 also includes a display region 705 which in this case displays the results of searches requested by the user. The window 701 also includes a search parameter menu bar 707 which includes configurable pull down menus 713, 715, and 717. The window 701 also includes a text entry region 709 which allows a user to enter text as part of the search query or search parameters. The button 711 may be a start search button which a user activates in order to start a search based upon the selected search parameters. Alternatively, the system may perform a search as soon as it receives any search parameter inputs or search queries from the user rather than waiting for a command to begin the search. The window 701 also includes a title bar 729 which may be used in conjunction with a cursor control device to move, in a conventional manner, the window around a desktop which is displayed on a display device. The window 701 also includes a close button 734, a minimize button 735, and a resize button 736 which may be used to close or minimize or resize, respectively, the window. The window 701 also includes a resizing control 731 which allows a user to modify the size of the window on a display device. The window 701 further includes a back button 732 and a forward button 733 which function in a manner which is similar to the back and forward buttons on a web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Safari. The window 701 also includes view controls 737 which include three buttons for selecting three different types of views of the content within the display region 705. When the contents found in a search exceed the available display area of a display region 705, scroll controls, such as scroll controls 721, 722, and 723, appear within the window 701. These may be used in a conventional manner, for example, by dragging the scroll bar 721 within the scroll region 721A using conventional graphical user interface techniques.

The combination of text entry region 709 and the search parameter menu bar allow a user to specify a search query or search parameters. Each of the configurable pull down menus presents a user with a list of options to select from when the user activates the pull down menu. As shown in FIG. 7A, the user has already made a selection from the configurable pull down menu 713 to specify the location of the search, which in this case specifies that the search will occur on the local disks of the computer systems. Configurable pull down menu 715 has also been used by the user to specify the kind of document which is to be searched for, which in this case is an image document as indicated by the configurable pull down menu 715 which indicates “images” as the selected configuration of this menu and hence the search parameter which it specifies. The configurable pull down menu 717, as shown in FIG. 7A, represents an add search parameter pull down menu. This add search parameter pull down menu allows the user to add additional criteria to the search query to further limit the search results. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 7A, each of the search parameters is logically ANDed in a Boolean manner. Thus the current search parameter specified by the user in the state shown in FIG. 7A searches all local disks for all images, and the user is in the middle of the process of selecting another search criteria by having selected the add search criteria pull down menu 717, resulting in the display of the pull down menu 719, which has a plurality of options which may be selected by the user.

FIG. 7B shows the window 701 after the user has caused the selection of the time option within pull down menu 719, thereby causing the display of a submenu 719A which includes a list of possible times which the user may select from. Thus it appears that the user wants to limit the search to all images on all local disks within a certain period of time which is to be specified by making a selection within the submenu 719A.

FIG. 7C shows the window 701 on the display of a data processing system after the user has selected a particular option (in this case “past week”) from the submenu 719A. If the user accepts this selection, then the display shown in FIG. 7D results in which the configurable pull down menu 718 is displayed showing that the user has selected as part of the search criteria files that have been created or modified in the past week. It can be seen from FIG. 7D that the user can change the particular time selected from this pull down menu 718 by selecting another time period within the pull down menu 718A shown in FIG. 7D. Note that the configurable pull down menu 717, which represents an add search parameter menu, has now moved to the right of the configurable pull down menu 718. The user may add further search parameters by pressing or otherwise activating the configurable pull down menu 717 from the search parameter menu bar 707. If the user decides that the past week is the proper search criteria in the time category, then the user may release the pull down menu 718A from being displayed in a variety of different ways (e.g. the user may release the mouse button which was being depressed to keep the pull down menu 718A on the display). Upon releasing or otherwise dismissing the pull down menu 718A, the resulting window 701 shown in FIG. 7E then appears. There are several aspects of this user interface shown in FIG. 7A-7E which are worthy of being noted. The search parameters or search query is specified within the same window as the display of the search results. This allows the user to look at a single location or window to understand the search parameters and how they affected the displayed search results, and may make it easier for a user to alter or improve the search parameters in order to find one or more files. The configurable pull down menus, such as the add search parameter pull down menu, includes hierarchical pull down menus. An example of this is shown in FIG. 7B in which the selection of the time criteria from the pull down menu 717 results in the display of another menu, in this case a submenu 719A which may be selected from by the user. This allows for a compact presentation of the various search parameters while keeping the initial complexity (e.g. without submenus being displayed) at a lower level. Another useful aspect of the user interface shown in FIG. 7A-7E is the ability to reconfigure pull down menus which have previously been configured. Thus, for example, the configurable pull down menu 713 currently specifies the location of the search (in this case, all local disks), however, this may be modified by selecting the pull down region associated with the configurable pull down menu 713, causing the display of a menu of options indicating alternative locations which may be selected by the user. This can also be seen in FIG. 7D in which the past week option has been selected by the user (as indicated by “past week” being in the search parameter menu bar 707), but a menu of options shown in the pull down menu 718A allows the user to change the selected time from the “past week” to some other time criteria. Another useful aspect of this user interface is the ability to continue adding various search criteria by using the add search criteria pull down menu 717 and selecting a new criteria.

It will also be appreciated that the various options in the pull down menus may depend upon the fields within a particular type of metadata file. For example, the selection of “images” to be searched may cause the various fields present in the metadata for an image type file to appear in one or more pull down menus, allowing the user to search within one or more of those fields for that particular type of file. Other fields which do not apply to “images” types of files may not appear in these menus in order reduce the complexity of the menus and to prevent user confusion.

Another feature of the present invention is shown in FIGS. 7A-7E. In particular, the side bar region 703A, which is the user-configurable portion of the side bar, includes a representation of a folder 725 which represents the search results obtained from a particular search, which search results may be static or they may be dynamic in that, in certain instances, the search can be performed again to obtain results based on the current files in the system. The folder 725 in the example shown in FIGS. 7A-7E represents a search on a local disk for all images done on December 10^(th). By selecting this folder in the side bar region 703A, the user may cause the display in the display region 705 of the results of that search. In this way, a user may retrieve a search result automatically by saving the search result into the side bar region 703A. One mechanism for causing a search result or a search query to be saved into the side bar region 703A is to select the add folder button 727 which appears in the bottom portion of the window 701. By selecting this button, the current search result or search query is saved as a list of files and other objects retrieved in the current search result. In the case where the search query is saved for later use rather than the saving of a search result, then the current search query is saved for re-use at a later time in order to find files which match the search query at that later time. The user may select between these two functionalities (saving a search result or saving a search query) by the selection of a command which is not shown.

FIGS. 8A and 8B show another aspect of a user interface feature which may be used with certain embodiments of the present invention. The window 801 of FIG. 8A represents a display of the search results which may be obtained as a result of using one of the various different embodiments of the present invention. The search results (e.g., search results 805A and 805B), are separated into categories which are separated by headers 805, 807, 809, and 811 which in this case represent periods of time. This particular segmentation with headers was selected by the user's selecting the heading “date modified” using the date modified button 803 at the top of the window 801. An alternative selection of the kind category by selecting the button 802 at the top of the window 801A shown in FIG. 8B results in a different formatting of the search results which are now categorized by headers which indicate the types of files which were retrieved in the search and are separated by the headings 815, 817, 819, and 821 as shown in FIG. 8B. The use of these headings in the search results display allows the user to quickly scan through the search results in order to find the file.

FIG. 9 shows another aspect of the present invention that is illustrated as part of the window 901 shown in FIG. 9. This window includes a display region 905 which shows the results of the search and the window also includes two side bar regions 903A and 903B, where the side bar region 903A is the user-configurable portion and the side bar region 903B is the system controlled portion. A folder add button 927 may be selected by the user to cause the addition of a search result or a search query to be added to the user-configurable portion of the side bar. The window 901 also includes conventional window controls such as a title bar or region 929 which may be used to move the window around a display and view select buttons 937 and maximize, minimize and resize buttons 934, 935, and 936 respectively. The window 901 shows a particular manner in which the results of a text-based search may be displayed. A text entry region 909 is used to enter text for searching. This text may be used to search through the metadata files or the indexed files or a combination of both. The display region 905 shows the results of a search for text and includes at least two columns, 917 and 919, which provide the name of the file that was found and the basis for the match. As shown in column 919, the basis for the match may be the author field or a file name or a key word or comments or other data fields contained in metadata that was searched. The column 921 shows the text that was found which matches the search parameter typed into the text entry field 909. Another column 911 provides additional information with respect to the search results. In particular, this column includes the number of matches for each particular type of category or field as well as the total number of matches indicated in the entry 913. Thus, for example, the total number of matches found for the comments field 915 is only 1, while other fields have a higher number of matches.

FIG. 10 shows certain other aspects of some embodiments of the present invention. Window 1001 is another search result window which includes various fields and menus for a user to select various search parameters or form a search query. The window 1001 includes a display region 1005 which may be used to display the results of a search and a user-configurable side bar portion 1003A and a system specified side bar portion 1003B. In addition, the window 1001 includes conventional scrolling controls such as controls 1021 and 1022 and 1021A. The window further includes conventional controls such as a title bar 1029 which may be used to move the window and view control buttons 1037 and maximize, minimize, and resize buttons 1034, 1035, and 1036. A start search button 1015 is near a text entry region 1009. A first search parameter menu bar 1007 is displayed adjacent to a second search parameter bar 1011. The first search parameter search bar 1007 allows a user to specify the location for a particular search while two menu pull down controls in the second search parameter menu bar 1011 allow the user to specify the type of file using the pull down menu 1012 and the time the file was created or last modified using the menu 1013.

The window 1001 includes an additional feature which may be very useful while analyzing a search result. A user may select individual files from within the display region 1005 and associate them together as one collection. Each file may be individually marked using a specific command (e.g. pressing the right button on a mouse and selecting a command from a menu which appears on the screen, which command may be “add selection to current group”) or similar such commands. By individually selecting such files or by selecting a group of files at once, the user may associate this group of files into a selected group or a “marked” group and this association may be used to perform a common action on all of the files in the group (e.g. print each file or view each file in a viewer window or move each file to a new or existing folder, etc.). A representation of this marked group appears as a folder in the user-configurable portion 1003A. An example of such a folder is the folder 1020 shown in the user-configurable portion 1003A. By selecting this folder (e.g. by positioning a cursor over the folder 1020 and pressing and releasing a mouse button or by pressing another button) the user, as a result of this selection, will cause the display within the display region 1005 of the files which have been grouped together or marked. Alternatively, a separate window may appear showing only the items which have been marked or grouped. This association or grouping may be merely temporary or it may be made permanent by retaining a list of all the files which have been grouped and by keeping a folder 1020 or other representations of the grouping within the user-configurable side bar, such as the side bar 1003A. Certain embodiments may allow multiple, different groupings to exist at the same time, and each of these groupings or associations may be merely temporary (e.g. they exist only while the search results window is displayed), or they may be made permanent by retaining a list of all the files which have been grouped within each separate group. It will be appreciated that the files within each group may have been created from different applications. As noted above, one of the groupings may be selected and then a user may select a command which performs a common action (e.g. print or view or move or delete) on all of the files within the selected group.

FIGS. 11A, 11B, 11C, and 11D show an alternative user interface for allowing a user to input search queries or search parameters. The user interface shown in these figures appears within the window 1101 which includes a user-configurable side bar region 1103A and a system specified side bar region 1103B. The window 1101 also includes traditional window controls such as a window resizing control 1131 which may be dragged in a conventional graphical user interface manner to resize the window, and the window further includes scrolling controls such as controls 1121, 1122, and 1123. The scrolling control 1121 may, for example, be dragged within the scrolling region 1121A or a scroll wheel on a mouse or other input device may be used to cause scrolling within a display region 1105. Further, traditional window controls include the title bar 1129 which may be used to move the window around a desktop which is displayed on a display device of a computer system and the window also includes view buttons 1137 as well as close, minimize, and resize buttons 1134, 1135 and 1136. A back and forward button, such as the back button 1132, are also provided to allow the user to move back and forth in a manner which is similar to the back and forth commands in a web browser. The window 1101 includes a search parameter menu bar 1111 which includes a “search by” pull down menu 1112 and a “sort by” pull down menu 1114. The “search by” pull down menu 1112 allows a user to specify the particular search parameter by selecting from the options which appear in the pull down menu once it is activated as shown in FIG. 11B. In particular, the pull down menu 1113 shows one example of a pull down menu when the “search by” pull down menu 1112 has been activated. The “sort by” pull down menu 1114 allows a user to specify how the search results are displayed within a display region 1105. In the example shown in FIGS. 11A-11D a user has used the “sort by” pull down menu 1114 to select the “date viewed” criteria to sort the search results by. It should also be noted that the user may change the type of view of the search results by selecting one of the three view buttons 1137. For example, a user may select an icon view which is the currently selected button among the view buttons 1137, or the user may select a list view or a column view.

FIG. 11B shows the result of the user's activation of a “search by” pull down menu 1112 which causes the display of the menu 1113 which includes a plurality of options from which the user may choose to perform a search by. It will be appreciated that there are a number of different ways for a user to activate the “search by” pull down menu 1112. One way includes the use of a cursor, such as a pointer on a display which is controlled by a cursor control device, such as a mouse. The cursor is positioned over the region associated with the “search by” menu title (which is the portion within the search parameter menu bar 1111 which contains the words “search by”) and then the user indicates the selection of the menu title by pressing a button, such as a mouse's button, to cause the pull down menu to appear, which in this case is the menu 1113 shown in FIG. 11B. At this point, the user may continue to move the cursor to point to a particular option within the menu, such as the “time” option. This may result in the display of a submenu to the left or to the right of the menu 1113. This submenu may be similar to the submenu 719A or to the menu 1214 shown in FIG. 12A. If the “kind” option is selected in the menu 1113, the submenu may include a generic list of the different kinds of documents, such as images, photos, movies, text, music, PDF documents, email documents, etc. or the list may include references to specific program names such as PhotoShop, Director, Excel, Word, etc. or it may include a combination of generic names and specific names. FIG. 11C shows the result of the user having selected PhotoShop type of documents from a submenu of the “kind” option shown in menu 1113. This results in the display of the search parameter menu bar 1111A shown in FIG. 11C which includes a highlighted selection 1111B which indicates that the PhotoShop type of documents will be searched for. The search parameter menu bar 1111 appears below the search parameter menu bar 1111A as shown in FIG. 11C. The user may then specify additional search parameters by again using the “search by” pull down menu 1112 or by typing text into the text entry field 1109. For example, from the state of the window 1101 shown in FIG. 11C, the user may select the “search by” pull down menu 1112 causing the display of a menu containing a plurality of options, such as the options shown within the menu 1113 or alternative options such as those which relate to PhotoShop documents (e.g. the various fields in the metadata for PhotoShop type of documents). A combination of such fields contained within metadata for PhotoShop type documents and other generic fields (e.g. time, file size, and other parameters) may appear in a menu, such as the menu 1113 which is activated by selecting the “search by” pull down menu. The user may then select another criteria such as the time criteria. In this case, the window 1101 displays a new search parameter menu bar 1115 which allows a user to specify a particular time. The user may select one of the times on the menu bar 1115 or may activate a pull down menu by selecting the menu title “time,” which is shown as the menu title 1116. The state of the window 1101 shown in FIG. 11D would then search for all PhotoShop documents created in the last 30 days or 7 days or 2 days or today or at any time, depending on the particular time period selected by the user.

FIGS. 12A, 12B, 12C and 12D show another example of a user interface for allowing the creation of search queries for searching metadata and other data and for displaying the results of the search performed using a search query. The different implementation shown in FIGS. 12A-12D shows a user interface presentation in a column mode; this can be seen by noting the selection of the column button, which is the rightmost button in the view buttons 1237 shown in FIG. 12A. The window 1201 has two columns 1211 and the display region 1205, while the window 1251 of FIG. 12C has three columns which are columns 1257, 1259, and the display region 1255, and the window 1271 has three columns which are columns 1277, 1279, and the display region 1275.

The window 1201 shown in FIGS. 12A and 12B includes a display region 1205 which shows the results of a search; these results may be shown dynamically as the user enters search parameters or the results may be shown only after the user has instructed the system to perform the search (e.g. by selecting a “perform search” command). The window 1201 includes conventional window controls, such as a resizing control 1231, a scrolling control 1221, a title bar 1229 which may be used to move the window, a window close button, a window minimize button, and a window resize button 1234, 1235, and 1236, respectively. The window 1201 also includes a user-configurable side bar region 1203A and a system specified side bar region 1203B. It can be seen from FIG. 12A that a browse mode has been selected as indicated by the highlighted “browse” icon 1203C in the system specified side bar region 1203B. The window 1201 also includes a text entry region 1209, which a user may use to enter text for a search, and the window 1201 also includes view selector buttons 1237.

A column 1211 of window 1201 allows a user to select various search parameters by selecting one of the options which in turn causes the display of a submenu that corresponds to the selected option. In the case of FIG. 12A, the user has selected the “kind” option 1212 and then has used the submenu 1214 to select the “photos” option from the submenu, resulting in an indicator 1213 (photos) to appear in the column 1211 under the “kind” option as shown in FIG. 12A. It can also be seen that the user has previously selected the “time” option in the column 1211 and has selected from a submenu brought up when the “time” option was selected the “past week” search parameter. When the user has finished making selections of the various options and suboptions from both the column 1112 and any of the corresponding submenus which appear, then the display showed in FIG. 12B appears. Note that the submenus are no longer present and that the user has completed the selection of the various options and suboptions which specify the search parameters. Column 1211 in FIG. 12B provides feedback to the user indicating the exact nature of the search query (in this case a search for all photos dated in the past week), and the results which match the search query are shown in the display region 1205.

FIGS. 12C and 12D show an alternative embodiment in which the submenus which appear on a temporary basis in the embodiment of FIGS. 12A and 12B are replaced by an additional column which does not disappear after a selection is made. In particular, the column 1259 of the window 1251 functions in the same manner as the submenu 1214 except that it remains within the window 1251 after a selection is made (wherein the submenu 1214 is removed from the window after the user makes the selection from the submenu). The column 1279 of window 1271 of FIG. 12D is similar to the column 1259. The window 1251 includes a side bar which has a user-configurable side bar region 1253A and a system defined side bar region 1253B. The system specified side bar region 1253B includes a “browse” selection region 1254 which has a clear button 1258 which the user may select to clear the current search query. The window 1271 of FIG. 12D provides an alternative interface for clearing the search query. The window 1271 also includes a user configurable side bar region 1273A and a system specified side bar region 1273B, but the clear button, rather than being with the “search” region 1274 is at the top of the column 1277. The user may clear the current search parameter by selecting the button 1283 as shown in FIG. 12D.

FIG. 13A shows another embodiment of a window 1301 which displays search results within a display region 1302. The window 1301 may be a closeable, minimizeable, resizeable, and moveable window having a resizing control 1310, a title bar 1305 which may be used to move the window, a text entry region 1306 and a user configurable portion 1303, and a system specified portion 1304. The window 1301 further includes buttons for selecting various views, including an icon view, a list view, and a column view. Currently, the list view button 1316 has been selected, causing the display of the search results in a list view manner within the display region 1302. It can be seen that the text (“button”) has been entered into the text entry region 1306 and this has caused the system to respond with the search results shown in the display region 1302. The user has specified a search in every location by selecting “everywhere” button 1317. Further, the user has searched for any kind of document by selecting the “kind” option from the pull down menu 1315 and by selecting the “any” option in the pull down menu 1319. The where or location slice 1307 includes a “+” button which may be used to add further search parameters, and similarly, the slice 1308 includes a “+” and a “−” button for adding or deleting search parameters, respectively. The slice 1307 further includes a “save” button 1309 which causes the current search query to be saved in the form of a folder which is added to the user configurable portion 1303 for use later. This is described further below and may be referred to as a “smart folder.” The search input user interface shown in FIGS. 13A and 13B is available within, in certain embodiments, each and every window controlled by a graphical user interface file management system, such as a Finder program which runs on the Macintosh or Windows Explorer which runs on Microsoft Windows. This interface includes the text entry region 1306 as well as the slices 1307 and 1308.

The window 1301 shown in FIG. 13B shows the activation of a menu by selecting the search button 1323A, causing a display of a menu having two entries 1323 and 1325. Entry 1323 displays recently performed searches so that a user may merely recall a prior search by selecting the prior search and cause the prior search to be run again. The menu selection 1325 allows the user to clear the list of recent searches in the menu.

FIGS. 14A, 14B, and 14C show examples of another window in a graphical user interface file system, such as the Finder which runs on the Macintosh operating system. These windows show the results of a particular search and also the ability to save and use a smart folder which saves a prior search. The window 1401 shown in FIG. 14A includes a display region 1403, a user configurable region 1405, a smart folder 1406, a system specified region 1407, an icon view button 1409, a list view button 1410, and a column view button 1411. The window 1401 also includes a text entry region 1415 and a location slice 1416 which may be used to specify the location for the search, which slice also includes a save button 1417. Additional slices below the slice 1416 allow the user to specify further details with respect to the search, in this case specifying types of documents which are images which were last viewed this week. The user has set the search parameters in this manner by selecting the “kind” option from the pull down menu 1419 and by selecting the “images” type from the pull down menu 1420 and by selecting the “last viewed” option from pull down menu 1418 and by selecting “this week” from the pull down menu 1422. The user has also selected “everywhere” by selecting the button 1421 so that the search will be performed on all disks and storage devices connected to this system. The results are shown within the display region 1403. The user can then save the search query by selecting the “save” button 1417 and may name the saved search query as “this week's images” to produce the smart folder 1406 as shown in the user configurable portion 1405. This allows the user to repeat this search at a later time by merely selecting the smart folder 1406 which causes the system to perform a new search again, and all data which matches the search criteria will be displayed within the display region 1403. Thus, after several weeks, a repeating of this search by selecting the smart folder 1406 will produce an entirely different list if none of the files displayed in the display region 1403 of FIG. 14A are viewed in the last week from the time in which the next search is performed by selecting the smart folder 1406.

FIG. 14B shows a way in which a user may sort or further search within the search results specified by a saved search, such as a smart folder. In the case of FIG. 14B, the user has selected the smart folder 1406 and has then entered text “jpg” 1425 in the text entry region 1415. This has caused the system to filter or further limit the search results obtained from the search query saved as the smart folder 1406. Thus, PhotoShop files and other files such as TIF files and GIF files are excluded from the search results displayed within the display region 1403 of FIG. 14B because the user has excluded those files by adding an additional search criteria specified by the text 1425 in the text entry region 1415. It can be seen that the “jpg” text entry is ANDed logically with the other search parameters to achieve the search results displayed in the display region 1403. It can also be seen that the user has selected the icon view by selecting the icon view button 1409. Thus, it is possible for a user to save a search query and use it later and to further limit the results of the search query by performing a search on the results of the search query to further limit the search results.

FIG. 14C shows the window 1401 and shows the search results displayed within the display region 1403, where the results are based upon the saved search specified by the smart folder 1406. The user has caused a pull down menu 1427 to appear by selecting the pull down region 1427A. The pull down region 1427 includes several options which a user may select. These options include hiding the search criteria or saving the search (which is similar to selecting the button 1417) or showing view options or opening the selected file. This allows the user, for example, to hide the search criteria, thereby causing the slice 1416 and the other search parameters to be removed from the window 1401 which is a moveable, resizeable, minimizeable, and closeable window.

FIG. 14D shows an example of a user interface which allows the user to specify the appearance of a smart folder, such as the smart folder 1406 FIG. 14C.

FIGS. 15A, 15B, 15C, and 15D show an example of a system wide search input user interface and search result user interface. In one particular exemplary embodiment, these user interfaces are available on the entire system for all applications which run on the system and all files and metadata, and even address book entries within an address book program, such as a personal information manager, and calendar entries within a calendar program, and emails within an email program, etc. In one exemplary embodiment, the system begins performing the search and begins displaying the results of the search as the user types text into a text entry field, such as the text entry field 1507. The search results are organized by categories and are displayed as a short list which is intentionally abbreviated in order to present only a selected number of the most relevant (scored) matches or hits to the search query. The user can ask for the display of all the hits by selecting a command, such as the “show all” command 1509. FIG. 15A shows a portion of a display controlled by a data processing system. This portion includes a menu bar 1502 which has at its far end a search menu command 1505. The user can select the search menu command by positioning a cursor, using a mouse, for example, over the search menu command 1505 and by pressing a button or by otherwise activating or selecting a command. This causes a display of a text entry region 1507 into which a user can enter text. In the example shown in FIG. 15A, which is a portion of the display, the user has entered the text “shakeit” causing the display of a search result region immediately below a “show all” command region 1509 which is itself immediately below the text entry region 1507. It can be seen that the hits or matches are grouped into categories (“documents” and “PDF documents”) shown by categories 1511 and 1513 within the search result region 1503. FIG. 15B shows another example of a search. In this case, a large number of hits was obtained (392 hits), only a few of which are shown in the search result region 1503. Again, the hits are organized by categories 1511 and 1513. Each category may be restricted in terms of the number of items displayed within the search result region 1503 in order to permit the display of multiple categories at the same time within the search result region. For example, the number of hits in the documents category may greatly exceed the available display space within the search result region 1503, but the hits for this category are limited to a predetermined or dynamically determinable number of entries within the search result region 1503 for the category 1511. An additional category, “top hit” is selected based on a scoring or relevancy using techniques which are known in the art. The user may select the “show all” command 1509 causing the display of a window, such as window 1601 shown in FIG. 16A. FIG. 15C shows a display of a graphical user interface of one embodiment of the invention which includes the menu bar 1502 and the search menu command 1505 on the menu bar 1502. FIG. 15D shows another example of the search result region 1503 which appeared after a search of the term “safari” was entered into the text entry region 1507. It can be seen from the search result region 1503 of FIG. 15D that the search results are again grouped into categories. Another search result window 1520 is also shown in the user interface of FIG. 15D. It can be seen that application programs are retrieved as part of the search results, and a user may launch any one of these application programs by selecting it from the search result region, thereby causing the program to be launched.

FIGS. 16A and 16B show examples of search result windows which may be caused to appear by selecting the “show all” command 1509 in FIG. 15A or 15B. Alternatively, these windows may appear as a result of the user having selected a “find” command or a some other command indicating that a search is desired. Moreover, the window 1601 shown in FIGS. 16A and 16B may appear in response to either of the selection of a show all command or the selection of a find command. The window 1601 includes a text entry region 1603, a group by menu selection region 1605, a sort by menu selection region 1607, and a where menu selection region 1609. The group by selection region 1605 allows a user to specify the manner in which the items in the search results are grouped according to. In the example shown in FIG. 16A, the user has selected the “kind” option from the group by menu selection region 1605, causing the search results to be grouped or sorted according to the kind or type of document or file. It can be seen that the type of file includes “html” files, image files, PDF files, source code files, and other types of files as shown in FIG. 16A. Each type or kind of document is separated from the other documents by being grouped within a section and separated by headers from the other sections. Thus, headers 1611, 1613, 1615, 1617, 1619, 1621, and 1623 designate each of the groups and separate one group from the other groups. This allows a user to focus on evaluating the search results according to certain types of documents. Within each group, such as the document groups or the folder groups, the user has specified that the items are to be sorted by date, because the user has selected the date option within the sort by menu region 1607. The user has also specified that all storage locations are to be searched by selecting “everywhere” from the where menu selection region 1609. Each item in the search result list includes an information button 1627 which may be selected to produce the display of additional information which may be available from the system. An example of such additional information is shown in FIG. 17 in which a user has selected the information button 1627 for item 1635, resulting in the display of an image 1636 corresponding to the item as well as additional information 1637. Similarly, the user has selected the information button for another item 1630 to produce the display of an image of the item 1631 as well as additional information 1632. The user may remove this additional information from the display by selecting the close button 1628 which causes the display of the information for item 1635 to revert to the appearance for that item shown in FIG. 16A. The user may collapse an entire group to hide the entries or search results from that group by selecting the collapse button 1614 shown in FIG. 16A, thereby causing the disappearance of the entries in this group as shown in FIG. 16B. The user may cause these items to reappear by selecting the expand button 1614A as shown in FIG. 16B to thereby revert to the display of the items as shown in FIG. 16A.

The search results user interface shown in FIGS. 16A and 16B presents only a limited number of matches or hits within each category. In the particular example of these figures, only the five top (most relevant or most highly sorted) hits are displayed. This can be seen by noticing the entry at the bottom of each list within a group which specifies how many more hits are within that group; these hits can be examined by selecting this indicator, such as indicator 1612, which causes the display of all of the items in the documents category or kind for the search for “button” which was entered into the text entry region 1603. Further examples of this behavior are described below and are shown in conjunction with FIGS. 18A and 18B. It will be appreciated that window 1601 is a closeable and resizable and moveable window and includes a close button and a resizing control 1625A.

FIGS. 18A and 18B illustrate another window 1801 which is very similar to the window 1601. The window 1801 includes a text entry region 1803, a group by menu selection region 1805, a sort by menu selection region 1807, and a where menu selection region 1809, each of which function in a manner which is similar to the regions 1605, 1607, and 1609 respectively of FIG. 16A. Each item in a list view within the window 1801 includes an information button 1827, allowing a user to obtain additional information beyond that listed for each item shown in the window 1801. The window 1801 further includes headers 1811, 1813, 1815, 1817, 1819, 1821, and 1823 which separate each group of items, grouped by the type or kind of document, and sorted within each group by date, from the other groups. A collapse button 1814 is available for each of the headers. The embodiment shown in FIGS. 18A and 18B shows the ability to switch between several modes of viewing the information. For example, the user may display all of the hits within a particular group by selecting the indicator 1812 shown in FIG. 18A which results in the display of all of the images files within the window 1801 within the region 1818A. The window is scrollable, thereby allowing the user to scroll through all the images. The user can revert back to the listing of only five of the most relevant images by selecting the “show top 5” button 1832 shown in FIG. 18B. Further, the user can select between a list view or an icon view for the images portion shown in FIGS. 18A and 18B. The user may select the list view by selecting the list view button 1830 or may select the icon view by selecting the icon view button 1831. The list view for the images group is shown in FIG. 16A and the icon view for the images group is shown in FIGS. 18A and 18B. It can be seen that within a single, moveable, resizable, closeable search result window, that there are two different views (e.g. a list view and an icon view) which are concurrently shown within the window. For example, the PDF documents under the header 1819 are displayed in a list view while the images under the header 1817 are displayed in an icon view in FIGS. 18A and 18B. It can also be seen from FIGS. 18A and 18B that each image is shown with a preview which may be capable of live resizing as described in a patent application entitled “Live Content Resizing” by inventors Steve Jobs, Steve Lemay, Jessica Kahn, Sarah Wilkin, David Hyatt, Jens Alfke, Wayne Loofbourrow, and Bertrand Serlet, filed on the same date as this application, and being assigned to the assignee of the present inventions described herein, and which is hereby incorporated herein by reference.

FIG. 19A shows another example of a search result window which is similar to the window 1601. The window 1901 shown in FIG. 19A includes a text entry region 1903 and a group by menu selection region 1905 and a sort by menu selection region 1907 and a where menu selection region 1908. Further, the window includes a close button 1925 and a resizing control 1925A. Text has been entered into the text entry region 1903 to produce the search results shown in the window 1901. The search results again are grouped by a category selected by a user which in this case is the people options 1906. This causes the headers 1911, 1913, 1915, and 1917 to show the separation of the groups according to names of people. Within each group, the user has selected to sort by the date of the particular file or document. The user interface shown in FIG. 19A allows a user to specify an individual's name and to group by people to look for communications between two people, for example. FIG. 19B shows another way in which a user can group a text search (“imran”) in a manner which is different from that shown in FIG. 19A. In the case of FIG. 19B, the user has selected a flat list from the group by menu selection region 1905 and has selected “people” from the sort by menu region 1907. The resulting display in window 1901A is without headers and thus it appears as a flat list.

FIG. 19C shows the user interface of another search result window 1930 which includes a text entry region 1903 and the selection regions 1905, 1907, and 1908 along with a scrolling control 1926. The results shown in the window 1930 have been grouped by date and sorted within each group by date. Thus, the headers 1932, 1934, 1936, 1938, and 1940 specify time periods such as when the document was last modified (e.g. last modified today, or yesterday, or last week). Also shown within the search results window 1930 is the information button 1942 which may be selected to reveal further information, such as an icon 1945 and additional information 1946 as shown for one entry under the today group. This additional information may be removed by selecting the contraction button 1944.

FIG. 19D shows a search result window 1950 in which a search for the text string “te” is grouped by date but the search was limited to a “home” folder as specified in the where menu selection region 1908. Time specific headers 1952, 1954, 1956, and 1958 separate items within one group from the other groups as shown in FIG. 19D.

FIG. 19E shows an alternative embodiment of a search result window. In this embodiment, the window 1970 includes elements which are similar to window 1901 such as the selection regions 1905, 1907, and a scrolling control 1926 as well as a close button 1925 and a resizing control 1925A. The search result window 1970 further includes a “when” menu selection region 1972 which allows the user to specify a search parameter based on time in addition to the text entered into the text entry region 1903. It can be seen from the example shown in FIG. 19E that the user has decided to group the search results (e.g., search results 1981), by the category and to sort within each group by date. This results in the headers 1973, 1975, 1977, and 1979 as shown in FIG. 19E.

FIG. 20 shows an exemplary method of operating a system wide menu for inputting search queries, such as the system wide menu available by selecting the search menu command 1505 shown in FIG. 15A or 15B, or 15C. In operation 2001, the system displays a system wide menu for inputting search queries. This may be the search menu command 1505. The user, in operation 2003, inputs a search, and as the search query is being inputted, the system begins performing and begins displaying the search results before the user finishes inputting the search query. This gives immediate feedback and input to the user as the user enters this information. The system is, in operation 2005, performing a search through files, metadata for the files, emails within an email program, address book entries within an address book program, calendar entries within a calendar program, etc. The system then, in operation 2007, displays an abbreviated (e.g. incomplete) list of hits if there are more than a certain number of hits. An example of this abbreviated listing is shown in FIG. 15B. The listing may be sorted by relevance and segregated into groups such as categories or types of documents. Then in operation 2009, the system receives a command from the user to display all the hits and in operation 2011 the system displays the search results window, such as the window 1601 shown in FIG. 16A. This window may have the ability to display two different types of views, such as an icon view and a list view within the same closeable, resizable, and moveable window. It will be appreciated that the searching, which is performed as the user is typing and the displaying of results as the user is typing may include the searching through the metadata files created from metadata extracted from files created by many different types of software programs.

FIGS. 21, and 22A, 22B, 22C, and 22D will now be referred to while describing another aspect of the inventions. This aspect relates to a method of selecting a group of files, such as a group of individual data files. In an exemplary method of this aspect, a data processing system receives a selection of a plurality of items, such as data files, folders (e.g. graphical user interface representations of subdirectories), application programs or a combination of one or more of these items. This selection may be performed by one of the many conventional ways to select a plurality of items such as (a) positioning a cursor at each item individually (e.g. through the movement of a mouse) and indicating a selection individually by, for example, pressing and releasing a button, such as a mouse's button; (b) pointing a cursor at a first item in a list and indicating a selection of the first item and pointing the cursor at a last item in a list of items and indicating a selection of all items from the first item to the last item in the list; (c) drawing a selection rectangle by a dragging operation of the cursor, etc. Thus operation 2101 shown in FIG. 21 receives one or more inputs indicating a selection of a plurality of items. The system in operation 2103 receives a command requesting both the creation of a new storage facility (e.g. a folder) and an association of the plurality of items with the new storage facility. While the operation 2103 is shown following operation 2101, in certain embodiments operation 2103 may precede operation 2101. The association of operation 2103 may be a copy or a move operation. For example, the user may select multiple items and then command the system to move those items from their existing locations to a new folder which is created in one operation as a result of the move and create new folder command. In response to the command received in operation 2103, the system creates a new storage facility, such as a new folder, with a predetermined directory path name or a user specified path name and the system further associates the selected plurality of items with the new storage facility. This association may be either a move or a copy operation. A copy operation would typically involve making a copy of each selected item and storing the item with a path name that reflects the storage of the item within the new folder having a predetermined directory path name or a user specified directory path name. A move operation, in which the items are moved into the new folder, may merely change the path names associated with each of the selected items (rather than making a copy of the items) which changed path names will reflect the new file system location (e.g. within the subdirectory of the new folder) of the selected items.

FIGS. 22A-22D show one example of the method of FIG. 21. A desktop 2201 on a display device is shown containing multiple windows and also an icon 2227 on the desktop. A cursor 2211 is also shown on the desktop. The windows 2203, 2205, and 2207 each contain a plurality of items shown as icons. In particular, window 2203 includes a data file represented by icon 2215 in a folder (e.g. a graphical representation of a subdirectory in a file storage system) represented by icon 2217. The window 2205 includes a program icon 2223 and a document icon 2219 and another document icon 2225 and a folder icon 2221. The window 2207 shows a list view of several files including “File B.” The user may then, using the cursor 2211 or using other conventional user interface techniques, select multiple items. This may be done with one input or more inputs which indicate the selection of multiple items. FIG. 22B shows the result of the user having selected icons 2215, 2217, 2223, 2225, 2227, and “File B” 2252 in window 2207. It can be seen that the cursor 2211 is positioned adjacent to the icon 2225 at this point in the operation. Then the user, after having selected a plurality of items, may invoke the command referred to in operation 2103. An example of this is shown in FIG. 22C which represents a portion of the desktop 2101, which portion is designated 2201A as shown in FIG. 22C. The user has caused a pop up menu 2230 to appear, which pop up menu includes three options 2231, 2232, and 2233. Option 2231 would allow a user to move all the selected items into the trash (e.g. delete them) while options 2232 and 2233 relate to the command referred to in operation 2103 of FIG. 21. In particular, option 2232 is a command which is selectable by the user to create a new folder and, in the same operation, move the items which have been selected into the new folder. Option 2233 is a command which allows the user to, in one operation, create a new folder and copy the selected items into the new folder. In the example shown in FIGS. 22A-22D, the user will select option 2232, thereby causing the system to create a new storage facility, such as a new folder with a predetermined directory name (e.g. “new folder”) or alternatively, a user specified path name. This result is shown in FIG. 22D in which the desktop 2201 now includes a new window 2251 labeled “new folder” which represents and shows the contents of this new folder, which is also shown as the folder 2253 which is a graphical user interface representation of this new folder.

It will be appreciated that this method may employ various alternatives. For example, a window may appear after the command option 2232 or 2233 has been selected, and this window asks for a name for the new folder. This window may display a default name (e.g. “new folder”) in case the user does not enter a new name. Alternatively, the system may merely give the new folder or new storage facility a default path name. Also, the system may merely create the new folder and move or copy the items into the new folder without showing the new window as shown in FIG. 22D.

FIG. 23 shows an exemplary method of using a machine-interpreted form of a search query. In operation 2301, the data processing system receives a user input which represents the initial search query. Typically, this is a group of words entered by a user into a text field which receives text entry. In operation 2303, the data processing system evaluates the initial search query, and automatically creates a machine-interpreted form of the search query, which may be considered to be a second query. Then the data processing system in operation 2305 performs the search using the second query, and in operation 2307 the data processing system displays the search results. Optionally, the data processing system may display how the initial search query was interpreted to be the second query and give the user the option to do another search with the initial search query without creating a machine-interpreted form. This allows the user to see how the initial search input was interpreted by the machine and to decide that it was an improper interpretation and to redo the search without allowing the machine to interpret the search query.

Certain embodiments may be implemented using an application program interface, such as the interaction between two or more computer programs. In this instance, one program (e.g. a first program) may provide a user interface by receiving an initial user input and providing the initial user input to another program (e.g. a second program such as a “plug in”) which automatically interprets the initial search input and produces a machine interpreted search input. This machine interpreted search input is then used to perform a search (which may be performed by the second program or by yet another program such as a third program). The results of the search are then conveyed to, for example, the first program which displays the search results to the user. The first program, or another program, may optionally display a control to allow machine interpretation to be turned on or off.

FIG. 24 shows a method to allow a user to turn on or to turn off machine interpretation. According to this exemplary method, a data processing system in operation 2401 displays a control on a display device. This control allows a user to turn on or to turn off machine interpretation of user inputted search queries. This control may be a radio button or other type of graphical user interface elements which are known in the art. The control may allow a user to turn on or turn off, on a search by search basis, machine interpretation of user inputted search queries. In operation 2403, the data processing system receives the user input through this control and accordingly turns on or turns off machine interpretation of user inputted search queries. The methods shown in FIGS. 25 and 26 assume that the user has turned on the machine interpretation rather than having it turned off.

Examples of certain types of machine interpretation of the search queries are described below. In general, the data processing system attempts to interpret the user's intent, and, in general, for certain embodiments, the data processing system avoids attempting to perform sophisticated natural language interpretation. This is typically done by detecting keywords which are recognized to specify a type of information, such as a date parameter, or a type of file or document parameter. An algorithm detects these key words and transforms the query using certain Boolean operators. One approach attempts to break down a search query which would, without machine interpretation, produce an empty set, such as the query “today yesterday”. There can be nothing which happened on both today and yesterday, so this query, if logically ANDed, will return an empty set. Clearly this is not what the user wanted. In this instance, by detecting these disjoint predicates and using a logical OR to join them, instead of a Boolean AND, the user's intent is achieved. Disjoint predicates may also be separated into groups. Two such groups include types of documents and date parameters. Other groups may include authors, senders of e-mails, etc. One example of a general algorithm is: A) gather all key words from the query into groups by type (e.g. dates, file types); B) within each group, map the keywords to their predicates, and OR the predicates together, forming a predicate for the category; C) AND logically the predicate for each category together; D) take the remaining (non-keyword) search terms, map each to a predicate matching against any metadata of files in the metadata database; E) join the predicates from operation D) with ANDs; F) form a predicate on file contents with all of the non-keywords, and OR that with the predicate from operation E); G) AND, through a Boolean operator, the predicates formed in operation F) and operation C) together to get the final query.

FIG. 25 shows an exemplary method for performing machine interpretation of a search query. The data processing system receives, in operation 2501, a search input which may be considered to be the initial search input from the user. In operation 2503, the data processing system detects keywords which relate to one or more classes or categories of data, such as a type of file, a date parameter of a file, an author of a file, or the sender of an electronic message, etc. After detecting these keywords, the data processing system, in operation 2505, groups keywords of the same class with a Boolean OR. An example of this grouping of keywords in the same class can be seen in FIG. 29, in which a user input in row 2901 of FIG. 29 specifies two different types of documents or files. In particular, the user input has specified a PhotoShop file and a jpeg file. Both of these inputs are recognized as a key word of the same class, the class being the kind or type of file. Thus, row 2903 shows that the machine categorization of both these key words is the same, resulting in the grouping of the keywords with a Boolean OR as shown in row 2905, which represents the machine-interpreted search query in FIG. 29. After operation 2505, the data processing system in operation 2507, grouped keywords and non-keywords with a Boolean AND to create a machine-interpreted form of the search query, which may be considered to be the second search query. An example of this grouping of grouped keywords and non-keywords can be seen in FIG. 27, in which the user input in row 2701 is “Steve today message”. The data processing system characterizes or categorizes this input as shown in row 2703. In particular, the machine interprets the word “Steve” as not a keyword, and interprets the word “today” as a time keyword, and interprets the word “message” as a kind keyword. This results in the machine-interpreted search query shown in row 2705 in which the non-keyword “Steve” has been joined through a Boolean AND operator with the time keyword “today” and the type keyword “e-mail or instant message” (a type of document). Thus, the machine-interpreted search query shown in row 2705 of FIG. 27 causes the data processing system to search through e-mail documents and instant messaging documents which are created or modified today and which include the word “Steve”. The search may be performed through a metadata database and/or an indexed database containing an index of the full text content of the files which have been indexed. The search query shown in row 2901 of FIG. 29 results in the search of all jpeg files or PhotoShop files. The search may be performed through the metadata database as in the example shown in operation 2509 of FIG. 25. This will result in the display of the search results in operation 2511.

FIG. 28 shows another example of how a data processing system interprets an initial search query to produce a machine-interpreted search query. In the example of FIG. 28, the user input in row 2801 is interpreted as two different types of keywords as shown in row 2803. In particular, the word “movies” is interpreted as a kind keyword representing a movie file type (e.g., a .mov or .avi file), and the user input “today” is interpreted as a time keyword. This produces the machine-interpreted search query shown in row 2805 which will cause a search for movie files having a date of creation or date of modification of today.

FIG. 26 shows a further exemplary method in which a data processing system interprets a search query to provide a machine-interpreted search query. In operation 2601, the data processing system receives the initial search input from a user, and detects in operation 2603 keywords which relate to one or more categories of data within the search input. In operation 2605, the data processing system groups keywords of the same category together. For example, keywords “today” AND “yesterday” will be grouped together. Another example of the grouping of keywords of the same category is shown in FIG. 29 in which jpeg file types and PhotoShop file types are grouped together with a Boolean OR in order to cause a search for either file type. Operation 2607 logically links the keywords with a Boolean OR operator within each group of keywords to form a linked set for each group. Then in operation 2609, the data processing system logically links with Boolean AND operators all of the linked sets from each group to form a combined set. Further, in operation 2611, the data processing system logically links through Boolean AND operators all non-keywords within the search input and the combined set to get a final machine-interpreted search query. Then, in operation 2613, the data processing system performs a search using the final machine-interpreted search query. This search may be through the metadata database and/or the full text content of the files. The full text content of the files may be searched through an index database or through the files directly without the use of an index database.

An example of a complex search query will now be used to show an example of the method of FIG. 26. “Foo bar today yesterday movies” is interpreted automatically by a date processing system as the following machine interpreted query (which is used to search in both a metadata database and full text content of files): (time=today or yesterday) AND (type=movies) AND (foo AND bar). The two time parameters called “today” and “yesterday” form one linked set and the typed parameter “movies” forms another linked set which are grouped together with a Boolean AND to create the combined set of “(today OR yesterday) AND (type=movies)” which forms the combined set which is logically linked with a Boolean AND operator with the two non-keywords “foo” and “bar”.

In certain embodiments, the parameter in the metadata may define how the parameter is combined logically (e.g. which Boolean operator is used) with other parameters or with the same parameter. For example, the kind parameter in metadata for a file specifies the type of file, and this parameter may be defined to use a Boolean OR operator to combine words which are categorized as being within the kind parameter, such as “movies” or “jpeg” or “message.” Thus, the parameter within a definition of the type of information in metadata for a file type may specify a rule (such as, use a Boolean OR to combine words) which indicates how to interpret a user's search query. The rule may also specify the words which are considered to mach the parameter's data type; for example, the kind parameter may include a rule that specifies that the words “email” or “message” are to be interpreted as requesting a search of email documents, and the rule may further specify that the words “jpeg” or “picture” or “image” or “photoshop” or “psd” or “tiff” are all to be interpreted as requesting a search of a variety of different image files.

Another aspect of the inventions is shown in FIG. 30, which represents a method of performing prefix matching when performing a search of a metadata database which has different types of data for different types of files. In other words, the type of information in metadata for files of a first type differs from the type of information in metadata for files of a second type. The method of FIG. 30 also shows that in certain embodiments, a space will normally define the beginning of a word but a dash or a dot is treated as a character rather than as a separator and thus is considered to be a character which may define the beginning of a word. In this case, characters which are normally treated as separators between words (and hence not part of a word) are treated as part of a word, such as the beginning of a word, and are considered for matching as part of a prefix matching search. Operation 3001 involves the receipt by the data processing system of a user search input. The data processing system then determines, in operation 3003, the beginning of each word. A space is used to define the beginning of the word but a dash or a dot is treated as a character rather than as a separator of words. The data processing system then uses the search input to perform a comparison from the beginning of each word in the content or metadata database. In particular, each word within the search input is compared to words in the metadata database or in the index database from the beginning of each word in the databases. As shown in operation 3005, the data processing system attempts to match until it finds a non-word or mismatch within the metadata database or index database. The results of the search are displayed in operation 3007. An example of how this type of prefix matching in which a dot or dash will be considered the beginning of a word is shown in the following table. In this table, the use of an “*” represents a wild card.

Input Searched Data Result *.jpeg picture.jpeg match picture jpeg no match picture.jpegbig match .test testnow no match .testnow match f-115 f 115 no match of-115 no match f-115.jpeg match paris paris match comparison no match

This table shows that prefix matching will cause a non-match (e.g., note how “paris” does not find “comparison”). This table also shows how the dot character may serve as a character which defines the beginning of the word, and hence, the input “.test” does not match “testnow”.

In the foregoing specification, the invention has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. It will be evident that various modifications may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the following claims. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than a restrictive sense. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, comprising: receiving, using one or more processing units, a search query, wherein the search query is received by a software component; parsing, using the one or more processing units, the search query into keywords and non-keywords; identifying, using the one or more processing units, a category for each keyword in the search query; grouping, using the one or more processing units, the keywords according to category, wherein categories include a file type, wherein metadata associated with a file type includes one or more parameters, wherein a parameter specifies a rule, and wherein grouping the keywords includes linking keywords in the same category using a Boolean OR; generating, using the one or more processing units, a machine interpreted search query by linking the grouped keywords with the non-keywords using a Boolean AND; and transmitting, using the one or more processing units, the machine interpreted search query, wherein when the machine interpreted search query is received by another software component, the machine interpreted search query is used to perform a search.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein categories further include date parameter of a file, an author of a file, or a sender of an electronic message.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein a rule specifies how to parse, identify, or group keywords within a category.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein a rule specifies one or more words that match one or more keywords within a category.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein a rule specifies one or more keywords that are associated with a category.
 6. The method of claim 1, further comprising: generating, using the one or more processing units, a combined set of groups by linking the groups of keywords together using a Boolean AND, wherein generating a machine interpreted search query includes linking the combined set with the non-keywords using a Boolean AND.
 7. A system, comprising: one or more processors; a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions configured to cause the one or more processors to perform operations, including: receiving a search query, wherein the search query is received by a software component; parsing the search query into keywords and non-keywords; identifying a category for each keyword in the search query; grouping the keywords according to category, wherein categories include a file type, wherein metadata associated with a file type includes one or more parameters, wherein a parameter specifies a rule, and wherein grouping the keywords includes linking keywords in the same category using a Boolean OR; generating a machine interpreted search query by linking the grouped keywords with the non-keywords using a Boolean AND; and transmitting the machine interpreted search query, wherein when the machine interpreted search query is received by another software component, the machine interpreted search query is used to perform a search.
 8. The system of claim 7, wherein categories further include date parameter of a file, an author of a file, or a sender of an electronic message.
 9. The system of claim 7, wherein a rule specifies how to parse, identify, or group keywords within a category.
 10. The system of claim 7, wherein a rule specifies one or more words that match one or more keywords within a category.
 11. The system of claim 7, wherein a rule specifies one or more keywords that are associated with a category.
 12. The system of claim 7, further comprising instructions configured to cause the one or more processors to perform operations, including: generating a combined set of groups by linking the groups of keywords together using a Boolean AND, wherein generating a machine interpreted search query includes linking the combined set with the non-keywords using a Boolean AND.
 13. A computer-program product, embodied in a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, including instructions configured to cause a data processing apparatus to: receive a search query, wherein the search query is received by a software component; parse the search query into keywords and non-keywords; identify a category for each keyword in the search query; group the keywords according to category, wherein categories include a file type, wherein metadata associated with a file type includes one or more parameters, wherein a parameter specifies a rule, and wherein grouping the keywords includes linking keywords in the same category using a Boolean OR; generate a machine interpreted search query by linking the grouped keywords with the non-keywords using a Boolean AND; and transmit the machine interpreted search query, wherein when the machine interpreted search query is received by another software component, the machine interpreted search query is used to perform a search.
 14. The computer-program product of claim 13, wherein categories further include date parameter of a file, an author of a file, or a sender of an electronic message.
 15. The computer-program product of claim 13, wherein a rule specifies how to parse, identify, or group keywords within a category.
 16. The computer-program product of claim 13, wherein a rule specifies one or more words that match one or more keywords within a category.
 17. The computer-program product of claim 13, wherein a rule specifies one or more keywords that are associated with a category.
 18. The computer-program product of claim 13, further comprising instructions configured to cause a data processing apparatus to: generate a combined set of groups by linking the groups of keywords together using a Boolean AND, wherein generating a machine interpreted search query includes linking the combined set with the non-keywords using a Boolean AND. 